


Total Frat Move

by Mellow_Yellow



Series: Frat-a-licious [1]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Frats and Bros, Gas Station Sex, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Road Trip, handjobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 18:29:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3144227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellow_Yellow/pseuds/Mellow_Yellow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Lip ditches him for fancy skiing with his fancy girlfriend, Ian is left stranded without a ride home for winter break. And while he can't ask his frat bros for help (he's only a lowly pledge, after all), he <em>could</em> ask his nerdy, perma-cranky roommate Mickey for a ride. As a total last resort-thing, of course. It's not like he has a big dumb gay crush on the guy or anything, he's just desperate. For a ride. Not the sexy kind. Damnit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Total Frat Move

Ian was trying not to whine into the phone, but talking to Lip, who had always taken it upon himself to be his combination brother-best friend-parental figure since forever, always made being the bigger person a fucking _struggle_.

“Lip, you promised we’d drive back together,” Ian said, keeping his voice low in an attempt to suppress the whine.

“I know I did, man, but Amanda’s family sprung this skiing trip on her at the last minute, and she begged me to come with.” On the other end of the line, Lip’s voice came through light and tinny, like the reception was bad. He was probably already at the airport.

“But you were my ride,” Ian insisted. Lip had promised him at the beginning of the semester that he’d be able to borrow his girlfriend’s big red truck and drive them both back from Illinois State to Chicago for break.

And maybe Ian had been foolishly looking forward to the road trip for weeks, so what. He hadn’t seen much of Lip since he’d started rushing, and he missed the big bossy idiot.

“You can get a ride with some of the other brothers,” Lip offered, then started listing off options easily. “Billy is going back to the suburbs, Mike lives on the North Side, I’m sure he could swing you back, Jake and Marcus are heading to Indiana, that’s on the way.”

Ian’s stomach dropped a little as Lip fired off the names. To Lip, it probably sounded like a problem with a solution no more difficult than ambling over to Sigma Chi and asking around for a spare seat in a car.

But Ian wasn’t Lip. Ian was just a pledge, and he still didn’t feel the same casual connection with any of the guys in his fraternity. Plus, he had no money to chip in for gas. Most of all, he felt an irrational, prideful revulsion at any of those guys seeing where the Gallaghers lived, and taking pity. He didn’t want them looking down on him, or even worse, down on Lip.

“Or I could give you money for the bus?” Lip paused over the phone. “I mean, some money. I got maybe twenty bucks on my debit card, but it’s all yours if you want it.” 

Ian winced at the offer. They were both living on loans (or in Lip’s case, scholarships and loans), and they were both tapped out, Lip especially. Living at the frat house was more expensive than the dorms, but he said he couldn’t afford to miss the parties if he wanted to run for frat president as a junior.

Resigned, Ian pulled on the bill of his snapback, twisting the hat right-way-around on his head. “It’s cool, Lip.”

Lip still didn’t sound convinced. “Ian, are you sure? I can tell Amanda I can’t go. We can figure this out.”

“No, it’s cool,” Ian said again, and this time he sounded more like he meant it. He didn’t want to cost Lip anything, especially not a trip with his rich girlfriend’s rich family to do rich stuff all winter long. “I’ll figure something out. Have fun skiing. Make sure you call Fiona on Christmas this year.”

Lip grumbled good-naturedly, easily sidetracked. “I did that one freaking time, and suddenly it’s like my top stat on the back of my baseball card.”

“Siblings don’t forget, man.” Ian smiled, even though he felt gloomy knowing Lip wouldn’t be home for winter break again this year. Lip hadn’t been able to afford it last year, and all the Gallaghers had been glum, Lip’s absence burning and obvious through Christmas and New years.

“I’ll take you to a basketball game when I get back,” Lip offered. “Watch ISU get crushed by Indiana?”

Ian rolled his eyes. He didn’t give a shit about any of ISU’s sports teams, but Lip had a tidy side-betting business so he was always up on the games. “Go Redbirds,” Ian said anyway, trying to sound cheered by the offer.

They both said goodbye after that and hung up. Slouching to tuck his chin into his hoodie against the cold, Ian trudged back across campus.

Winter break was going to suck so hard, alone in the dorms by himself.

 

*

 

His roommate was already in the dorm when Ian closed to door behind him, which wasn’t a surprise. His roommate was almost always in the dorm, unless he was in the library. Dude did not know how to kick back, like, at all.

“Hey, Mickey,” Ian said, trying to keep his tone jovial despite his disappointment. He was doggedly determined to make friends with guy, somehow, over the course of the academic year, so help him god.

Mickey raised an eyebrow, his bright blue eyes sharp through the thick frames of his glasses, but didn’t respond. He looked back down at the textbook in his lap in dismissal, effortlessly making Ian feel both sheepish and dumb, and like he should definitely be studying more, just in general.

Mickey made Ian feel like that a lot. It was probably why Ian spent so much more time at the frat than in his own dorm, even when he didn’t have any pledge duties to attend to or Lip was otherwise occupied with Amanda.

Ian rolled his eyes and shimmied out of his sweat pants so he was just in basketball shorts and threw himself on his own twin bed, huffing out a loud sigh. He closed his eyes, letting himself wallow in his misery for a moment.

Then he stilled, inspiration striking. He raised his head to look at Mickey across from him. “When do you go home?”

Mickey held up a finger for Ian to wait, pointedly finishing the page he was on before he looked up, eyebrows raised. Ian did his best not to roll his eyes again. Mickey didn’t talk much, but Ian already considered himself, if not fluent, than at least conversational in Mickey Eyebrowese.

Right now, they said, _what the fuck do you want?_

Ian found himself babbling to fill the silence. “I was just…wondering when you’re heading home. Because I’m not. Heading home, I mean. It’s just, well, looks like I’m stuck here, because my brother ended up going with his girlfriend to Colorado, and I don’t really know any of the other brothers well enough to ask.” He paused, then thought to add, “Not like, actual brothers. I’m rushing for Sigma Chi.”

“I know,” Mickey said flatly.

“Oh,” Ian said, surprised. “I didn’t think I told you.” It wasn’t like they’d interacted much since move-in day, despite Ian’s initial attempts to draw Mickey out of his shell. Mickey had not been about that life, like at all, and Ian had made a strategic retreat for the next few months.

“Of course I fucking know,” Mickey said now, glaring. “You fucking roll into the dorms drunk off your redheaded ass three or four nights out of the week, your fucking frat bros are always here dragging you away to some stupid mixer or party or whatever.” He raised his eyebrows. “Trust me, I know you’re rushing.”

“Oh.” Ian flushed, embarrassed. Mickey was so quiet, Ian had no idea he’d been pissing the guy off this whole time. “Sorry, if I’ve been…loud. I didn’t know it—sorry.”

Mickey leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, and Ian had to look away. Fuck, Mickey was pretty goddamn ripped for some nerd who spent all his time reading books for class and chilling in the library, which as far as Ian knew was all Mickey did.

He coached himself not to stare. Frat House Rules, he reminded himself, which basically meant No Checking Out Other Dudes. No matter how pretty their piercing blue eyes were or how hot their incongruous swear-word finger tattoos were or how cute their frustrated, exasperated scowl was when they were staring at their roommate like they didn’t make any sense, _fuck_.

 _Tighten up, you loser_ , he lectured himself.

Mickey was still waiting, so Ian pushed on, even though he was feeling less sure of his brilliant idea as Mickey stared at him.

“I was just thinking, if you’re going home, maybe I could hitch a ride—forget it,” Ian cut himself off, seeing the way Mickey’s eyebrows were arching. Not a good sign. Ian laughed uncomfortably. “Never mind, fuck me, right?” He pulled his hat from where it had fallen at the foot of his bed, fiddling with the hard cardboard of the bill.

Silence fell in the tiny dorm room. Mickey was looking at him still, and Ian was looking fixedly at the hat in his hands. Finally, Mickey snapped his book shut with a huff.

“Look, I got my last final,” Mickey said. “It’s an in-class essay, so I don’t want to be late.” He stood up from his bed and started putting on his shoes and coat.

Gun to his head, Ian couldn’t think of what class Mickey might be taking that would require an in-class essay. He was like a short (tiny, adorable— _get it together, Gallagher,_ he shouted internally) stranger.

“Okay,” Ian said dully. “Good talk.”

Mickey looked like he wanted nothing better than to snark back, but he seemed to settle for rolling his eyes and slamming the door to their room on his way out. 

Ian sighed. He pulled out his phone to call Fiona and break the bad news. He hesitated, and ended up wimping out and just texting. He didn’t think he could handle the special brand of disappointment and guilt that was his oldest sister’s trademark at the moment. She was going to throw a fit.

And it wasn’t like she had any spare money to spend on a bus ticket either, so they were all sunk. She could barely support the younger kids with her waitressing salary. The last thing he wanted was for her to throw money away on a bus ticket that the family needed for utilities or bills.

Text sent, he settled back on his bed, pulling his comforter up around him. Well, it wasn’t like he couldn’t use his sudden free time to take a nap. If college had done two things for Ian, it was teach him how to power through a hangover and how to nap at any given opportunity. 

He was drifting fitfully between waking and sleep  a few hours later when he heard the door to the dorm open and felt something small and metal thump on his chest.

Ian blinked his eyes open. Mickey was standing beside his bed, staring down at him. His cheeks were flushed from the cold, his glasses foggy. Ian brought a hand to his chest and felt for the object that had woken him, and held up a set of car keys up, peering questioningly at them.

“I talked to my brother,” Mickey said, apropos of nothing. “He’s working over break, so I’m taking his car.”

“Okay,” Ian said slowly. His mind still felt fuzzy. None of this was connecting for him. “You have a brother that goes here?”

Mickey huffed impatiently. “No, he’s a janitor.” 

“Okay,” Ian said again, digesting this unexpected grain of information. Between this and earlier, he’d heard Mickey talk more voluntarily today than the rest of the semester combined. 

Mickey looked at the ceiling in a _give me strength_ kind of gesture, then down at Ian again. “So I can give you a ride, idiot.”

Ian scrambled to his feet, struggling to untangle himself from his blankets. “Shit,” he said, finally standing. “ _Shit_. For real? You’d drive me?”

“That’s what I said,” Mickey said gruffly.

“Fuck, that’d be awesome!” Ian tried to reign in his enthusiasm, but it was tough. He bounced on the pads of his feet like a puppy. “Wait.” He stilled. “I thought you lived…” He trailed off as he realized he didn’t have a clue where Mickey lived. Maybe he’d mentioned it back during orientation? That week had been a haze of party benders. “Where do you live?”

This time Mickey’s eyebrows clearly said, _You are too stupid to live_. “We’re both from the city.”

Ian smiled widely. “No way! What are the odds, man?”

Mickey was giving him a weird look as Ian hurried to throw his shit in a bag, trying not to give Mickey the chance to rethink his offer. He made a note to call Fiona and tell her he’d be coming home after all.

“Don’t get too excited," Mickey said, "it’s better for me this way. Driving kind of gives me a migraine." He looked strangely sheepish. He gestured vaguely at his glasses. “Part of the stigmatism. I can’t really drive for long distances.”

“No problem, bro,” Ian said easily. Privately, he wondered what Mickey’s plan would have been if Ian wasn’t tagging along.

“Thanks, bro,” Mickey said mockingly. He grabbed a backpack and stuffed a few things in it, not nearly as much as Ian was taking. Maybe dude just liked to travel light.

Noticing Ian’s gaze, Mickey straightened. “Move your ass then, let’s get going,” he snapped. He hustled past Ian into the hall of the mostly empty dorm building, and Ian had no choice but to trail along behind him out to the parking lot where a beat-up old Chevrolet sat waiting for them. 

He threw his bag in the back and joined Mickey in the front seat, where he seemed to be concentrating on pretending Ian didn’t exist, or at the very least wasn’t sitting beside him.

 _It’s a free ride_ , Ian told himself as he got comfortable in the passenger seat. _You can suck it up for a free ride back home_.

“Get your foot off the dashboard you animal, come on,” Mickey said, smacking Ian’s ankle.

Ian let his head fall back against the headrest. Looked like it was going to be one hell of a long free ride back home, though.

 

*

 

It was immediately clear that Mickey wasn’t a great driver. Ian wasn’t any great shakes either, he'd grown up in the city after all, but at least he could get the job done without leaning forward in the seat to squint out the windshield like a wizened turtle, or an old lady, or an old turtle lady. Mickeys glasses were already pretty thick, but Ian couldn’t help but wonder if it was time to up his prescription

Ian also had a feeling if he uttered even the first few words of that observation Mickey would reach over and strangle him to death one-handed, so he did his best to inconspicuously grasp the oh-shit handle and keep his mouth shut as Mickey swerved gently side to side in their lane.

“How’d your final go, man?” he asked finally, to distract himself from the fact they were lurching along at fifty in the left lane and herds of cars were zipping by to pass them on their right.

Mickey glanced over. “It went fine.” He hesitated, then added, to Ian’s eternal surprise, “Sorry I’ve been so pissed off lately, I just—been studying, you know?”

Ian resisted the urge to ask who the fuck Mickey was and what he’d done with Ian’s unapologetically standoffish asshole of a roommate. Not to mention that to say  Mickey had been pissed off _lately_ implied that Mickey went through contrasting periods of being not-pissed off at other times, and Ian shared a room with the guy, so he knew that was false.

He waved away the apology anyway. It wasn’t like he didn’t enjoy the way Mickey frowned and huffed as he studied, like the fate of the world rested on his ability to absorb whatever information was in the textbook before him, eyebrows all scrunched and mouth hanging open just a little—so yeah, Ian wasn’t too bothered by it. 

"No worries, man,” he said, rather than saying _sometimes I stare at you while you study because I’m creepy_. “You’re just a crazy good student, no big deal.”

So good, in fact, that it always made Ian feel like a crazy shitty student in comparison, watching Mickey study his ass off even during the weekends while Ian got wasted at frat parties Thursday through Sunday and skated by with the ol’ bare min in class. It made him feel guilty, especially after Lip had worked his ass off on Ian's application to get him accepted into ISU despite his lackluster high school grades.

Ian sighed and turned to watch the frost-covered cornfields out the window. He still wasn’t used to living outside the city in the middle of nowhere, but it did have a certain alien beauty, bleak and frozen as winter approached.

“You do alright on yours? You’re in the Comms school, right?” Mickey asked grudgingly after a moment, like he was just now remembering that conversations generally followed a back-and-forth cadence.

Ian lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “They went alright, I guess.”

He had done alright on his finals, not great, just alright, or just alright enough to keep Lip off his ass. Besides, his Communications pre-reqs didn’t exactly require him to split atoms or critically argue theory, so it was easy enough. And Lip said it was okay to keep it as a nonsense placeholder major until he figured out what he really wanted to do.

It’s just that Ian had no fucking _clue_ what that might be, and it stressed him out more than the actual school part of college.

“It’s good that you work so hard, though,” he added, just to keep the conversation from dying. “I don’t think I could study as much as you do.”

“Well, I don’t really have a choice," Mickey said. Ian gave him a look, and Mickey elaborated. “I have to keep my GPA above a 3.7,” he said, glancing at Ian like he was slow.

Ian rolled his eyes. “Yeah, god forbid you start pulling a B average, the world would fall apart.” 

But Mickey was shaking his head. “No, I mean, I _have_ to,” he said again. “If I let it drop, I lose my scholarship, it was from some rich alumni at my high school, it’s like…a whole thing.” He shook his head, rubbing idly at his nose in what Ian guessed was an embarrassed gesture.

“Huh,” Ian said idly. He thought he remembered Lip discussing a similar scholarship back in the day, before he’d been offered National Merit. “I think my high school had a scholarship like that, too.”

Mickey was giving him that look again, like Ian had some kind of traumatic brain injury. “Yeah, I know.” Mickey raised an eyebrow. “My high school too.”

Ian decided he’d bite, because Mickey was obviously being all cryptic on purpose. “Oh? What high school you go to?”

And despite himself, Ian was interested. This was probably the longest conversation he’d had with Mickey since they’d moved in back in August and Mickey had told him that if Ian woke him up stumbling home drunk from another frat party he’d smother him to death in the middle of the night with a pillow.

This conversation was decidedly less threatening than that one had been, which was a plus.

“Are you serious?” Mickey asked. He glanced away from the road to look at Ian, and Ian tensed until he refocused on the highway, halting their creep toward the rumble strip. 

“Um,” Ian stalled, buying time, because maybe Mickey had already told him once and he’d forgotten? “Give me a hint?”

“We went to the same high school, man,” Mickey said tiredly. He pushed his glasses up with one hand and rubbed at his eyes like they were burning. 

“What?” It sounded like a yelp, but Ian couldn’t help himself. “Bullshit. Bullshit we went to the same high school.” There was no way he would’ve missed Mickey, or at least he didn’t think so.

“We did, man.” Mickey was nodding over Ian’s protests. “Trust me. Richards, over in New City. I went there, all four years.”

“Why didn’t you ever say anything, though?”

“I thought you knew, I mean _I_ knew, I recognized you.” Mickey shrugged. Something about the dismissive gesture made Ian feel like an asshole, even though he honestly had no recollection of seeing the other boy in school. 

He slumped back in his seat. “Shit.” The guy had no reason to lie to him, so Ian just had to accept that there’d been this regulation hottie hanging out in the halls with him the whole time and Ian had had his head too far up his ass to notice.

Not that he would’ve had the guts to do anything but stare longingly from afar, but still. It would’ve made the days pass quicker.

“I didn’t have glasses back then, maybe that’s why,” Mickey said, offering Ian an out, somewhat inexplicably, since in the past few months Mickey hadn’t really seemed to give a shit about putting Ian at ease.

“Yeah, maybe,” Ian said, but he didn’t think that was it. It was just, he was so _aware_ of Mickey now, the strange, mysterious tides of his moods and habits and micro-expressions, but then, high school was a blur of slacking off and following Lip around like a duckling, so maybe it was possible.

Then Mickey went and spoke up _again_ , voluntarily offering information about himself, which was…Ian would have to go with _incredibly unexpected_.

“My old man didn’t really give a shit about getting my eyes checked, and then I had to get student insurance when I started at ISU to enroll,” he said, chatting idly, Ian stunned by the deluge of words, “and then I went in for an eye exam when the insurance came through this summer because I kept getting headaches, and then boom, it was like, does everybody see like this all the time? I felt like a superhero or some shit, like I could stop crime with my awesome new vision.”

He chuckled to himself, and Ian just stared. If he thought Mickey was cute when he scowled and grumped around the dorm, he was a fucking public menace when he smiled.

He saw Ian staring, and covered his laughter with a cough, schooling his features back into judgmental blankness, but it was too late, Ian already knew what his smile looked like, and he had a sneaking suspicion it was going to feature prominently in his next jerkoff highlights reel.

“Anyway. It’s not a big deal,” Mickey said again. In Ian’s mind, it was becoming his trademark phrase. “Even without the glasses, you probably didn’t see much of me around. I kind of kept to myself after I told my dad I was gay and he kicked me out.” 

It was like a miniature bomb went out off in Ian’s head. The nonchalance with which Mickey could utter what happened to also be Ian’s Big Secret took his breath away. Mickey didn’t seem to give a shit, really.

“You’re gay?” As soon as the words were out, Ian could’ve smacked himself in the head. _Real smooth, you dickhead_.

Mickey didn’t even look away from the windshield. “Yep. Thought you knew.”

Ian didn’t know how he was supposed to have known, since as far as he knew Mickey had never brought anyone back to the dorm, girl or guy, but he was distracted by the origin story Mickey had so casually divulged and circled back to that.

“You just woke up one day and told your dad you're gay?” Ian had never told anyone that about himself, not even Lip, or at least not verbally.

Mickey considered, then nodded. “Basically. Yeah.”

“What, did he catch you with another guy or something?” 

Mickey raised both eyebrows, like the suggestion was a weird one. “Um. No?”

“Did he like, find your porn?”

“What do—no, jesus.”

“Was there some kind of rumor going on in the neighborhood or something?” 

“What?” Mickey sounded annoyed. “No! I just told him.”

“You just came out to your dad? Just like that?” Ian knew he must look like an asshole with his mouth hanging open like that, but he felt suspended in some kind of extended animation of disbelief, the very idea of what Mickey was describing so incredible he couldn’t get over it.

Mickey smiled humorlessly. It was kind of a spooky expression. He looked like he was remembering something so awful it was like a nightmare. “Well, it was a little bit more complicated than that.” He shrugged. “But, yeah. I just got tired of hiding it.”

“Why didn’t you just wait?” The words were out before Ian could even think about what he was saying, but he couldn’t help it, he had to ask or he'd never forgive himself for missing the opportunity.

“Wait?” Mickey repeated. “What do you mean?”

“Why didn’t you just wait to tell him?” Ian gestured with his hands to indicate the great beyond of “after” he always pictured in his head. “Like, just wait it out, until after you graduated, or went to college or whatever?”

Mickey seemed to ponder. He pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Why would I wait?” he asked finally. It was like the thought hadn’t even occurred to him.

Ian pressed anyway, because there was no way what he was saying was that off base, he couldn’t have been the only closet-case in their high school. Mickey was just fucking with him, surely. “Because it would’ve been so much easier. Why not just wait to tell your dad?” 

Mickey’s face went hard. “Because _fuck_ my dad, that’s why.”

There was obviously more to the story of his dad than that, but he didn’t volunteer anything else, and Ian didn’t ask. 

Instead, he went silent and sat back. He made an effort to close his mouth shut so he wouldn’t throw any more words into the abyss. He tried to process what Mickey had said, but it was tough. It was like the story just wouldn’t compute.

When Ian was fifteen and Lip was almost seventeen, Lip had found some dirty magazines under Ian’s bed. The family all shared the same beat up laptop, so looking up porn on the internet was an exercise in futility, especially when you had a brother like Lip who was perfectly capable of tracking down every item in the browser history, no matter how well you thought you’d wiped it.

Which was why when Ian had stumbled upon the stack of old early 90s magazines in the basement, probably some kind of holdover from Aunt Ginger’s days as primary home owner, he’d thought he’d scored, big time. Sure, the dudes had weird haircuts and the lighting was all soft and glowy like a glamor shot at the mall, but they were naked and they were kissing and touching and fucking, and Ian could finally jerk off to actual wanking material in peace, like a civilized human being.

Until Lip found Ian’s stash and put a stop to those fantasies real quick.

He’d just been sitting there on the bed, waiting for Ian to get home after school one day. He’d held out one of the magazines, one snarky eyebrow raised high, and Ian’s whole body had gone hot and painful with instant, all-consuming shame.

He’d waited for Lip to get wound up, start yelling at him, but he didn’t. He just looked at Ian, silent, and that was almost worse, because he looked scared. There was a tight set to Lip’s eyes, and he looked like he wanted to say something, but it was caught in his throat. So instead he just sat there, staring, and Ian stood there, staring back, feeling wildly like he was about to cry with his horrible secret just strewn on the floor for both of them to see.

Eventually, Lip got up and left the bedroom, brushing past Ian’s shoulder on the way out. He took the magazines, and didn’t speak to Ian for a few days. When he finally broke the silent treatment, he seemed to have steeled himself.

“Just wait,” he’d muttered, standing stiffly beside Ian at the backdoor in the kitchen before they left for school one morning. “Please. Don’t do anything. Just wait, okay?”

Ian swallowed thickly, the hot sweaty shame climbing up his neck again. “Okay,” he whispered, even though he hadn’t been entirely sure what Lip had meant at the time. He just knew that Lip was smarter than him, and if Lip was telling him something, it was Ian's job to listen up.

When he looked back on it all now, like peering down a long, cloudy hallway, he remembered other similarly vague conversations with Lip, where Lip had pleaded with him to just wait it out. “Get out of the neighborhood first,” he’d always say. “Priorities, man. Get out of the neighborhood first, then you can do whatever you want.”

Except then “get out of the neighborhood first” had become a caveat to “and also graduate high school first,” and now there was “rush the frat first” and “graduate college first” and Ian had a sinking suspicion that even then, it would be “now get a job first” and “get married first” and “have kids first” and somehow along the way he would never really have the chance to be who he really was.

And he hated it, he was coming realize. As he sat in the car beside Mickey, Mickey blithe admission of coming out to his dad still wafting between them, Ian realized he hated waiting more than he'd hated anything in his entire life.

 

*

 

Mickey’s eyes started bothering him about an hour in, and they stopped at a McDonalds so Ian could switch to the driver’s seat.

Mickey was similarly uneasy with Ian’s driving skills, but he was a lot less shy about voicing his thoughts on the matter.

“Yo, slow the fuck down man, I’m not trying to die on a highway in central Illinois,” he said, tensing in his seat and grabbing the oh-shit handle with both hands. 

“Relax, you drama queen,” Ian said, letting the gentle teasing rest cautiously, then relaxing when Mickey didn’t immediately bite his head off for the familiarity.

“I’m just saying, we’re both young, we got a lot to live for, no reason to go down in a cartwheeling ball of flame,” Mickey said stiffly, eyeing the speedometer pointedly. 

“Oh for—I’m going _sixty-five_ , man, that’s the speed limit!” Ian shook his head, but he eased off the gas just a little to appease him. He moved to the right lane, and smirked as Mickey settled down beside him. 

They fell silent then, but it wasn’t awkward like it sometimes was in the dorms. Mickey seemed more comfortable around him than he ever had before, like they'd cleared some roommate hurtle between them.

“So how’s the frat thing going?” Mickey asked, startling Ian a little that he was actually instigating conversation.

“Frat thing? You mean rushing?” Ian fumbled, trying not to act too surprised. “It’s fine. I mean, Lip’s already a brother, so I got a bid no problem, and pledging is annoying but it’s over now.” He glanced at Mickey. “Why, you thinking of rushing in the spring?”

Mickey looked at him, his mouth quirking, then his lips parted and he threw his head back and laughed, cackled really, cracking up like Ian had told the most hilarious joke in the world.

Ian turned back to the road, huffing a little. “Alright, calm down,” he said, irritated. “I was just asking.”

It took a while for Mickey to calm down. Eventually, still giggling, he wiped delicately at his eyes. “No,” he said, his voice still shaking with mirth, “I am not planning to rush a fraternity.” He shook his head, grinning, and bent to root through the backpack at his feet. He pulled out a paperback and set it in his lap. “Rush a frat,” he said under his breath, like he was repeating said hilarious joke. 

Then he opened his book and started reading, and Ian assumed that meant they were Done Talking Now. He used the opportunity to surreptitiously watch Mickey frown out of the corner of his eye.

He wondered how Mickey was able to read in the car. He assumed it would give him a headache just like driving did, but it didn’t seem to bother him. In fact, he seemed absolutely engrossed. Ian wasn’t much of a reader himself, and he wondered what Mickey was reading that held his attention so easily, but he was confident that interrupting to ask would not win him any points.

“You know I can tell when you’re staring at me, right?” Mickey said without looking up from the book in his lap. 

A brutal blush worked its way up Ian’s neck and across his face like a forest fire. “I wasn’t staring,” he said quickly.

Mickey just shook his head. “Just saying. If you’re considering about doing anything that requires stealth after graduation, maybe rethink it.” But when Ian glanced over, Mickey was smiling at his book, and Ian relaxed. It was just teasing, he told himself, maybe Mickey just thought he was a starer, not that Ian had a big unrequited crush on Mickey that had only grown three sizes like the Grinch’s heart when he discovered Mickey was gay.

“There go my dreams of being a cool international spy,” he said, keeping his voice light.

“You’d have to be cool first,” Mickey said loftily.

Ian laughed, throwing a fist out to punch Mickey lightly on the shoulder. “You’re a dick.”

Mickey didn't respond to that, but he held his book out to show Ian the cover. It was some fantasy novel. Lip would probably recognize it. As it was, Ian just nodded, making a "hmm" noise, and Mickey rolled his eyes and went back to reading.

Ian could see him still smiling into his book, though, and somehow just the knowledge that he’d made Mickey, eternally taciturn roommate-slash-scholar, smile, made Ian feel a little lightheaded with accomplishment.

Then he shook himself. This was getting out of control. Lip would have his ass if he found out Ian was crushing on his roommate, and was flirting ineptly and hopelessly in the car with him. It flew right in the face of their agreed-upon Just Wait policy.

A policy that Ian was coming to hate, but he pushed that down. He just needed to get through this car ride.

A song on the radio changed to something high-pitched and annoying, and Ian gritted his teeth.

“I hate this song,” he said absently. He went to twist the knob but Mickey smacked his hand away. Ian flushed at the contact like an idiot and looked down to hide the blush.

“Come on, everybody loves this song,” Mickey said, looking up from his book.

Ian shook his head, trying not to smile at having Mickey’s attention again. “Not me, man.”

Mickey snorted. “What kind of gay dude doesn’t like Madonna?” 

All the air in the car was suddenly sucked away like they were in a space ship and the windows had been breached.

Ian could hear the blood pounding in his ears. He swallowed. His jaw hurt from clenching it so tightly.

“Dude,” he said, his voice loud in his ears. “I’m not gay.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, he watched Mickey’s eyebrows creep ever higher on his face. “Um. Yeah, you are.” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, waving a hand in front of him. “You can play along with your fucking frat bros all you want, but you don’t got to lie to me. 

“Dude,” Ian said again, emphatically. “I’m _not_ gay.”

This time Mickey just shook his head. “Whatever, man. Stay in the closet, make a home for yourself in there. Not my business.”

And then he sat back, flipping a page in his book, like whatever, he was done with this, no matter that he’d flipped Ian’s world upside down like the fucking Hulk.

Ian pulled over onto the shoulder with a jerk, ignoring the honks of the cars behind him and the startled squawk Mickey made as he was thrown against the car door.

“What the _fuck_ , Gallagher?” he shouted, his book flying from his hands to the dashboard. He reached over and shoved Ian hard in the shoulder.

“No, what the _fuck_ , Milkovich?” Ian yelled back, throwing the car in park and shoving Mickey back hard with both hands.

“You’re fucking out of your mind!” Mickey bit out.

“And you’re an asshole, so we’re even,” Ian shot back, somewhat obscurely, but whatever, he was ready to throw _down_.

They were both breathing hard, their seat belts the only thing holding them back as they twisted around to glare at each other.

“You don’t fucking know me, man,” Ian said heatedly, because that was the crux of it, here he was having a nice harmless silent crush on his roommate and said roommate had to go and fuck it up by offhandedly outing Ian like it didn’t matter, like Ian hadn’t been working for _years_ to push it down where nobody could see. “You act all high and mighty just because you landed some fucking scholarship, but you don’t fucking _know me_.”

Mickey’s mouth quirked slyly. “Oh, I know you fine, you dick. I been sharing a ten by ten shoebox with you for a whole semester, I know you couldn’t put your goddamn clothes into the laundry bag if the fate of the fucking world hung in the balance, and _I know_ ,” he said, poking Ian hard in the shoulder twice with each word, “that you’re gay as a goddamn maypole.”

Ian’s mouth opened and closed, fishlike, before he could get a handle on it and smooth his features into blankness. Because Mickey was looking at him still, intent, like he could see right through him without even trying, and nobody had looked at him like that before, not even Lip, especially not Lip.

He thought of messing around with Kash in the back of the store, furtively exchanging hand jobs and then sprinting back home so he wouldn’t be late and raise suspicions. He thought of eyeing Jimmy’s smarmy dad in the kitchen, slipping away to let the old guy blow him in the basement before rushing upstairs to nonchalantly get into bed across the room from Lip like nothing had happened.

And the whole time he kept thinking wait, just wait, like it didn’t really count as long as he told himself it didn’t count, like he was following some weird gaming tutorial with rules that didn’t make sense, not even to him.

Yet all that time it didn’t matter, because even his fucking roommate could tell, apparently, like it was cross-stitched across Ian's forehead. 

“You got a big fucking mouth,” Ian said after an excruciating silence.

“Yeah, well,” Mickey said, but he didn’t sound as pissed off now. He shook his head as he looked at Ian’s hands gripping the steering wheel like he was trying to strangle it. “You’re a shitty driver.” His eyebrows furrowed low on his brow.

To the uninitiated, it probably sounded like a throwaway insult, but to Ian, who spoke Mickey’s Eyebrows even more fluently now than he had when the car ride started, took it for what it was: a gruff apology for forcing the issue.

“Your _face_ is a shitty driver,” Ian muttered, tacitly reverting to their previous teasing. He flushed in surprise as Mickey barked out a surprised laugh.

“Man, you’re a nerd,” Mickey said. He was smiling now, still shaking his head as Ian put the car in drive and pulled back out into traffic.

“I’m a nerd?” Ian echoed in disbelief. “You’re reading about fucking elves in the car right now, and I’m the nerd?”

“Excuse you, Lord of the Rings is classic literature,” Mickey said, with dignity. He reached over and flicked at the bill of Ian's hat.

“What would you know about classic literature,” Ian said, straightening his snap-back as they fell back into the easy rhythm of teasing banter, almost like he was with Lip or one of his siblings, except he didn’t find himself staring at his siblings’ lips and wondering what they tasted like, thank fucking god for _that_.

There was a pause, and he glanced over to see Mickey looking confused, which on him translated into a frown.

Ian made a face. “What?”

Mickey coughed. “I’m a Lit major,” he said slowly. “So. Um. I kind of would know about classic literature and shit.”

“Oh,” Ian said. He felt like an asshole. He’d been living with Mickey for almost four months now and he didn’t even know the guy’s major, too busy leering at him like a creepy asshole and trying desperately to pretend he was straight. 

“It’s no big deal,” Mickey said. He took his book back from where it had flown onto the dashboard but he didn’t open it back up right away.

“Sorry,” Ian said anyway. “I’ve been kind of distracted with rushing and all the frat…stuff.” It was a weak excuse, and Ian felt weak making it.

Mickey huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, you have been.” He didn’t sound mad about it, which kind of made Ian feel worse.

He didn’t know Mickey’s major, or that he was from the same part of Chicago as Ian, or that he was gay or liked nerdy fantasy novels or that his brother worked for the university, and fuck. What else had slipped through the cracks of Ian’s awareness while he was desperately trying to follow Lip’s lead to fit in? If he had to hazard a guess, he’d say a lot. 

All that, for some frat he wasn’t even that invested in, that he was just pledging because his brother told him to. Man, he was kind of a tool, he reflected, but then he glanced down and noticed the gas tank indicator.

“Shit, we need gas,” he told Mickey.

Mickey leaned over the middle console to squint at the dashboard, and Ian did his best to remain still and not flinch at the warm, soft contact of Mickey’s shoulder against his side. Mickey’s dark head was just below his chin. If he leaned forward just a tiny bit, he’d be able to smell him.

He did actually flinch then, because fuck, _smell him_? He was falling apart over here, good god, Lip had only let him off the leash for what, a day and half and he was already having to forcibly restrain himself from jumping his roommate’s bones.

“Yep, looks like we do,” Mickey said, and Ian honestly needed to take a second to remember what they were even talking about.

Mickey settled back, nodding in agreement. Ian forced himself not to glance over again. They only had another hour and a half to go. He could do this. He just needed to fucking focus and he’d be fine.

 

*

 

The gas station was mostly empty, which surprised Ian at first, since he figured there’d be more college kids heading home for break, but then, it was the week before Christmas almost. They were running kind of late.

Mickey walked up to the counter to pay for gas and Ian headed to the back to use the bathroom. When he was washing his hands, he looked at himself in the mirror. He had two circles of color high on his cheeks. He looked breathless, excited almost. 

“Keep it together,” he told his reflection. 

He heard the door handle start to turn. “Almost done,” he said, but the door was already opening. “Yo, I said almost—”

He cut himself off when he saw it was Mickey stepping inside, he stopped when he saw Ian at the sink. “Oh, sorry man, didn’t know.”

As Mickey went to step back out, and without even consciously deciding what he was about to do, Ian saw his own arm shoot forward and grab Mickey by the wrist.

Mickey froze, looking at the hand on his wrist, then up at Ian’s face. His mouth was hanging open a tiny bit. 

Slowly, carefully, Ian pulled on Mickey’s arm until he had reeled him into the tiny bathroom, the door shutting gently behind them as they stared at each other.

It was a little like an out of body experience, except he also felt more present in his body than ever before. His heart was pounding and he heard himself breathing, each breath heavier than the last, as he drew Mickey closer toward him. 

All the other times, the rushed gropes with Kash or Ned Lishman in the past, Ian had been able to compartmentalize them as slip-ups, just some older dude taking control for a minute while Ian just let himself float, without thinking about what he was doing or what it meant. 

This time, Mickey was staring up at him, his face so close Ian could lean forward and lick into his mouth with barely any effort, and then Ian would know exactly what he was doing, and what it meant. 

So he did.

Feeling his hands shaking, he bent down enough to capture Mickey’s mouth with his own. Mickey seemed surprised but he pressed up into the kiss anyway, piloting his tongue into Ian’s mouth immediately. Ian had made out with some drunken sorority girls at a few parties, but this was the first time he’d full-on sober kissed someone since Kash, and that had felt weird and uncomfortable whereas this felt warm and so wet and like something Ian hadn’t even realized he’d been craving.

Mickey wrapped his arms around Ian’s body, bringing them flush together. Ian was already half-hard in his jeans, and the sensation of Mickey against him made his dick twitch to full hardness as Ian gasped. He pulled back enough to look down at Mickey, drink in his dilated eyes and his kiss-bitten pink mouth.

He watched Mickey swallow, the movement of his throat, and then Mickey was diving back up, biting his way roughly, harshly, so _perfectly_ into Ian’s mouth. They crashed backwards, Ian’s ass hitting the sink, and then Mickey was standing between Ian’s legs, stepping forward so his thigh was tucked up in Ian’s crotch and all Ian needed to do was sit back and ride the pressure, pressing his suddenly aching cock against the relief of Mickey’s leg beneath him.

“Fuck, Ian,” Mickey muttered, biting at Ian’s throat as Ian pulled his mouth free, needing to gasp a little to catch his breath.

He couldn’t take his hands off Mickey though, just kept running them down until he could ease under Mickey’s coat and push it off his shoulders. Mickey followed suit and pushed Ian’s coat off too, wrapping a hand around Ian’s neck to drag their mouths together again. 

They surged against each other, Ian rutting against the Mickey’s thigh, Mickey jerking to press his hard cock into Ian’s hip. Ian shifted down a little, and the next time Mickey pressed forward, their cocks made contact, and even through the thick barrier of their jeans they both moaned. 

Still kissing, still sweeping his tongue through Mickey’s mouth and trying to get a deeper taste, Ian slipped his hands under Mickey’s shirt, running his hands up the warm skin of Mickey’s back. Mickey squirmed at the touch, pressing closer, then stepped back to get at Ian’s zipper. 

Ian groaned at the feel of Mickey’s hand on his bare cock. This was so much different than touching himself, or letting some older guy use him to get off, this felt like actual fire licking on his skin, and when Mickey wrapped both hands around his cock and twisted his wrists Ian arched his back, pressing forward helplessly.

“Jesus,” he bit out. “That feels—oh my _god_ , Mickey.”

He looked down blearily to see Mickey pause to take his own cock out of his jeans, going on his tiptoes to line them up. Ian blinked and moved to help, bending his knees so their cocks slide together and _jesus_ that felt so good, so smooth and good, he wanted to do this forever, he never wanted to _stop_. 

They started up a harsh, galloping rhythm, Mickey jerking them together with both hands while Ian fucked into Mickey's fist, grabbing hold of Mickey’s ass with both hands to pull his hips back and forth with the contact.

Mickey leaned forward and latched on to the bare skin just above the collar of his shirt near his collarbone, biting down, and Ian came, hard, so hard he felt like he was falling. In the daze of orgasm, he felt Mickey jerk, his come joining Ian's on Mickey's fist.

They collapsed against each other, Ian holding up most of their weight against the sink.

“I can’t believe we just did that,” Ian panted into the sudden silence of the bathroom. He pressed his forehead to Mickey’s, his hands still on his ass, fingers spasming occasionally.

Mickey pulled back to grin, looking up into Ian’s eyes. “I can,” he said, his own breath still labored. “I’ve been wanting to do that since August, man.”

 

*

 

Ian felt loose-limbed and loopy when they settled back into the car after cleaning up and scurrying, laughing, out of the gas station together. Mickey got into the driver’s seat, and Ian didn’t even think to object. He’d just had the best orgasm of his life, what the hell did he care if they went careening over the median to their death because Mickey was moderately blind behind the wheel? 

He waited for the Big Gay Crisis to wash over him, but it didn’t come. He felt like he’d been fighting to keep this buried for so long, now that he’d finally given in it was almost anticlimactic.

“Stop smiling so much, it’s weird,” Mickey said gruffly. Ian hadn’t been focusing on it, but when Mickey mentioned it, he noticed he was grinning wide like a Jack o’lantern, which, fair, was probably super creepy to look at.

“My bad,” Ian said, biting his lip to try and stifle the expression, but he was only successful for maybe two minutes. Mickey just shook his head and kept on driving.

After a while, his tongue still loose and easy, Ian heard himself talking, surprising even himself at the words. “Lip thought it might not be a great idea to let it slip I was into dudes, if I wanted to rush for the frat,” he said. It wasn’t like Mickey had asked, but it still felt like a relief to say the words out loud.

“You ever think maybe your brother’s just a major dickhead?” Mickey’s voice was hard, like he was ready to kick Lip’s ass if given half the chance. It made Ian feel warm, even if he knew he technically should be rushing to defend his brother’s honor.

Ian couldn’t hold back a startled laugh. “Well,” he said, catching his breath a little, “I wouldn’t say maybe so much as yes, definitely, Lip is absolutely a major dickhead.”

Mickey pursed his lips like he was holding back a retort, and Ian couldn’t help but smile. He just looked so adorable, biting his tongue to keep from insulting Ian’s brother, the freaking softie. And damn, Ian couldn’t help but think, this gay thing was getting harder and harder to keep under wraps.

“It’s not like he’s some horrible stage mother,” Ian said, trying to explain the cosmic mystery that was his brother. “He just worries about me. I come from a family with a lot of kids and no parents, and my sister was always more worried about the littler kids. I was Lip's problem, always."

“He took care of you by being a huge homophobic schmuck?” Mickey shut his mouth immediately. “Sorry. It’s none of my business.”

“No, it’s okay, I know it doesn’t paint him in the best light.” Ian exhaled slowly, considering. “It’s hard to explain. Sometimes, with Lip, it’s just easier to go along with him when he’s got a plan in his head, even if it's not necessarily what you would maybe…want, if it was just you, on your own,” he finished hesitantly, the words shy to come out of his mouth. 

He saw Mickey glance at him out of the corner of his eye. “Then why the fuck do you listen to him?” The strangled words burst forth like Mickey couldn’t keep them back any longer. “Do you even _want_ to join that stupid frat?”

The question made Ian pause. He honestly never really thought about it. Lip had rushed his freshman year, so Ian had just assumed he would do the same thing. Join the same frat, do what he did.

In Ian’s entire life, it had always been easier to follow the path Lip carved out than try and make one on his own. It was safer, too.

  

*

 

They rolled into the city limits just as dusk was starting to fall. Ian was still feeling giddy, and Mickey kept rolling his eyes at him but he kept grinning when he thought Ian wasn’t looking.

The closer they got to the old neighborhood though, the more restless Ian began to feel. Lip wasn’t even at the house, but he felt like as soon as he stepped inside, his brothers and sisters would all immediately know that their brother had just let another guy jack him off at a gas station off the highway, like it was stamped on his skin.

Not that Fiona or Debbie or Carl or Liam would be mad at him or mean to him, he didn't think they would at least, but the thought of them being grossed out or upset literally made Ian feel ill. Not to mention that as soon as they knew, Lip would know too. Secrets in the Gallagher family had a pitifully short shelf life.

They caught a red light near New City and Ian waited until Mickey had braked completely before turning to face him and blurting, “Do you think I should just tell everyone?”

Mickey looked startled, which, fair enough, Ian had kind of sprung it on him. “Tell everyone what?” he asked. He put the car in park while they waited so he could turn in his seat to face Ian more fully. He looked so serious, concentrating on Ian’s words like there would a midterm on them later, and it was all Ian could do to keep himself from closing the distance and kissing him. 

He held back, though. “About the…you know.” He brought his hands up, let them fall back into his lap with a clap. “The guy thing. The liking guys thing.”

Both Mickey's eyebrows were high this time, eyebrowese for _are you fucking serious right now?_ “You mean the gay thing?” Mickey asked wryly.

Ian swallowed, hesitated. It was ridiculous how hard it was to just think the word, let alone say it out loud. But Mickey’s eyebrows were right, his reticence over one stupid word was dumb, and he steeled himself.

“Yeah, the,” he paused only for a split second, “the _gay thing_. Should I tell everyone?”

“Everyone? You mean, the whole wide world?” A corner of Mickey’s mouth picked up in a tiny, adorable smile. “That might be tough, just like, logistically speaking.”

“I’m serious,” Ian said, tangling his hands together in his lap, clasping and unclasping his fingers. “Should I tell my family?”

Mickey reached out and touched Ian’s knee gently. “Only if you want to,” he said seriously.

“But I don’t know if I want to,” Ian said helplessly. He looked down at Mickey’s hand on his knee, and watched as Mickey brought it up to grasp his forearm, wrapping his fingers firmly just below Ian’s elbow.

“Then maybe that’s your answer for now,” Mickey said evenly.

It should have felt like a relief, Ian knew, that Mickey was giving him blanket permission to back down, not to spend his winter break agonizing over whether to tell his family something he’d been perfectly happy keeping a secret about for the last nineteen years of his life.

Over the last three hours though, something about it had become intolerable. The secretiveness of it all, the implicit lying, the fucking _waiting_.

As he looked at Mickey watching him intently from the other side of the car, Ian didn’t need an academic scholarship to tell him what specially had caused the shift.

Impulsively, Ian darted forward and pressed a kiss to Mickey’s mouth. He’d meant it as a quick little gesture, but as soon as their lips touched, as soon as Mickey’s glasses bumped lightly against Ian’s nose, Ian was pressing for more, wanting to increase the pressure.

Mickey gasped minutely at the contact, and that was it, Ian was done for. He moaned, opening his mouth and sweeping his tongue across the seal of Mickey’s lips until he opened and let Ian inside. Ian brought both hands up and wrapped them around Mickey’s shoulders, but he couldn’t keep his hands still, his fingertips dragging down the back of his neck and around his back, tracing the shapes of his biceps and elbows under his sweater. He pulled his mouth away from Mickey’s and dragged it down the arch of his throat, loving the way Mickey threw his head back to give Ian more room, his heartbeat pounding against Ian’s tongue through the thin skin over the chords of his neck.

Ian let his right hand drift down, down, until it was high on Mickey’s thigh, gripping tightly. Mickey tugged at Ian’s shoulder bringing him up to smash their mouths together again, but then with a tilt of his head Mickey gentled it, drawing back to peck once, twice, before sealing his mouth over Ian’s and tangling their tongues together, Ian’s heart pounding hard enough to make his ribs ache. 

A sharp, angry horn sounded, and Ian and Mickey jumped apart. Ian glanced forward to see the light was green, and beside him Mickey put the car back in drive.

“Shit,” he said, then looked over at Ian. They burst into laughter as Mickey put his foot on the gas and drove them through the light.

Ian was silent as they drove the last few blocks to the old neighborhood. Mickey kept glancing at him, and if Ian wasn’t so lost in his own thoughts, he might’ve teased him and told him he could tell when Mickey was staring, too. 

“I told my dad because I wanted to,” Mickey said quietly after a few more minutes. “And for a while, things were really bad. I kind of wished I hadn’t, that I could take it back. But then, I moved in with my uncle, and he made me focus on school, which my dad and the rest of my family never really gave a shit about. But now I’m in fucking college, man, and I don’t feel afraid anymore. I never thought I could that.” Mickey smiled as he drove, his cheeks flushed bright red, his teeth almost blinding in the dimness of the car. Ian couldn’t take his eyes off him. “My whole life…it’s my own. Everything I do, it's because of _me_. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s mine, now.”

Ian just listened, his throat feeling hot and dry, unable to think of anything to say. The grouchy old man of a roommate Ian had come to know was nowhere to be seen. Mickey looked young, somehow, triumphant, and for a split second Ian was almost painfully jealous. Mostly, though, he wanted to have that feeling, too.

Mickey reached over to put his hand on Ian’s knee again. “But that’s just me, man, that’s just my family. Your family is different. You know them better than me.”

Ian bit his lip, then let himself blurt it all out. “What if I come out to the frat and all the brothers are super weird about it?”

“If any of the _bros_ ,” and Mickey had to pause to make a face, like the word tasted awful, “are weird, then you kick their fucking teeth in,” he said, unconcerned.

“What if Lip is weird about it?” Which was what he’d really been asking in the first place, Ian knew.

This time Mickey spared him a glance. “Then he needs to fucking get over himself.”

“Yeah,” Ian said, but he was distracted. He couldn’t stop thinking about his brother, about how Lip had always looked out for him, no matter what. Lip got accepted to a bunch of better schools than ISU, but he went to ISU anyway, because that was the only school Ian had even half a chance of getting into, too. He had gotten Ian into a studying schedule with his homework this semester, tutored him on his Algebra 1000 class he’d been struggling with, he introduced Ian to all the guys at the frat, he’d practically guaranteed Ian would get a bid at rush, he invited him to every party. Even if they didn’t see each other, he called Ian at least once every day, not just texts, just to check in.

Lip was his best friend. How did you tell your best friend that you didn’t want to wait to be who you are anymore? 

Like he could sense the gerbil-like circles of Ian’s thoughts, Mickey moved his warm hand from Ian’s knee to the back of his neck. He squeezed gently.

“I never thought I’d have to tell you this, but I think you’re overthinking things, Frat Boy,” Mickey said, laughing ruefully. He shook Ian’s head a little from his grip on Ian’s neck.

Before Ian had the chance to protest, Mickey gestured to a house up ahead with his chin. “That’s you up there, right?” They were already at Ian's house.

Ian didn’t have the heart to ask how Mickey knew where Ian lived, because he had a sinking suspicion that, far from being nothing more than former classmates, Mickey and Ian were actually _neighbors_. And Mickey had never said anything, just assumed, correctly, that Ian had never really noticed, that he’d been too wrapped up in his own nonsense to look outside the desperate haze he’d let himself fall into. It was frightening, that he could miss so much so easily because he was trying to hide something so tiny.

He didn’t want to be like that anymore, he decided.

When Mickey pulled up to the curb, Ian looked at the familiar run-down old house in front of him and nodded to himself. He felt like he’d made a decision. He had three weeks to watch it play out, but for now, it was strangely calming to have the decision itself behind him.

He pulled his coat back on and got out, straightening his hat on his head and going to grab his bag from the backseat. Mickey parked and followed him, and they stood, somewhat awkwardly, on the sidewalk leading up to the house. 

“So,” Ian said, ingeniously.

Mickey raised an eyebrow, but it seemed fond. He smiled. “So, indeed.”

Ian felt himself blush. Fuck, all he wanted to do was go someplace and have Mickey jerk him off again, maybe return the favor this time, but he knew his siblings were probably at the window, waiting for Ian to come inside, and he only had a few more minutes before at least Carl and Liam lost patience and came to meet him outside. 

“Look,” Ian said hurriedly, taking a step closer, “I have to get in there before my sister comes out and drags me inside, but maybe we can get together sometime over break?”

Ian took a breath, holding it, but Mickey was starting to look shifty.

“I mean, I know you probably have to go home and stuff,” Ian said into the silence, although he didn’t really know why Mickey would ever want to see his asshole of a dad again, but that was none of his business, “but maybe Monday? Or the week after Christmas?”

Mickey’s face closed off a little. “No, I’ll probably just see you back at the dorm, you know?” 

“Oh, okay—Wait,” Ian stopped, the words catching up with him. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not going home,” Mickey said carefully. “My dad would have my ass if I showed up there, and I don’t want to see the old asshole anyway.”

“Where are you going now, then?” Ian asked, bewildered.

Mickey motioned back at the car with his thumb. “Probably just gonna…hit the road.”

Ian felt his mouth fall open. “So, what, you’re just going to…drive all the way back down to school?” he sputtered, sure Mickey was joking. 

Mickey moved a shoulder uncomfortably. “I mean, not right away. I’ll stop and get some food first, I’m hungry as shit.”

“I thought you were coming home for winter break too,” Ian said. He sounded mystified. He felt mystified. Why had Mickey offered him a ride, then?

“Nah, it’s been years since I been back,” Mickey said dismissively. “I moved in with my uncle when I was sixteen so it’s not like he kept my room for me or something. I’ll probably just have dinner with my brother back by the dorms.” He shifted uncomfortably under Ian’s incredulous gaze. “I can get some reading started for classes next semester.”

“Why would you drive three hours both ways for no reason?” Ian demanded.

“It’s not a big deal,” Mickey said, putting his hands out as if to shoo Ian away. His eyebrows were coming down into a scowl but Ian didn’t have time to waste on secret eyebrow languages right now, he needed to hear it from Mickey himself. 

“Why did you drive me all the way here then?” Ian insisted, reaching out to grab Mickey’s elbow so he couldn’t whirl away. “Why, Mick?”

Mickey yanked his arm back. “Because I felt like it, okay?” he shot back angrily.

But Ian couldn’t let it go, not now. “Why?”

Mickey took a breath, glancing away. When he looked back, his eyes were hooded and vulnerable. He kept glancing down at his shoes. “It’s _not a big deal_ , fuck. Just let it go.”

“Just tell me,” Ian said softly. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Mickey. He wanted to know when his surly, unfriendly, antisocial roommate had become so captivating that Ian couldn’t bring himself to look away. He chanced touching Mickey on the chin, trying to urge his face up so Ian could see his eyes more clearly.

Mickey glanced up, and he didn’t look annoyed or surly now. He looked anxious. His eyes were wide behind his glasses. 

For a while there, Ian thought Mickey would just refuse to answer, and they’d just stand there, staring at each other in front of Ian’s childhood home until they both passed out from dehydration. 

So he almost didn’t hear the soft words, when Mickey finally opened his mouth, looking pained. “You just looked so sad. I couldn’t…I didn’t want you to be stuck at school if you didn’t want to be there.”

“You drove me all the way back home because you didn’t want me to be sad?” Ian asked. He sounded wobbly, but he couldn't help it. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

Mickey scowled for real now and tried to pull away, his cheeks going ruddy with a blush, but Ian didn’t let him, using both hands to hold his shoulders and keep him in place.

Behind him, in the house, Fiona and Carl and Debbie were probably all watching. Ian knew that when Lip called later that week, Fiona would probably mention what she was watching right now. Lip would know soon enough, he’d know Ian had decided he wasn’t going to wait any longer. He'd probably be mad, tell Ian all about how much more complicated this was going to make things, how fucked up this would make things at the frat.

Ian suddenly, totally, completely did not give a shit.

Without even glancing around to see if they were alone on the street, Ian stepped forward, moving until he was pressed up completely into Mickey’s space.

Mickey was watching him, his eyes wide behind his glasses, eyebrows high and defiant, but his mouth was hanging open a little like he was waiting, a little breathless, and that’s what did it for Ian.

He swooped in, inclining his head just right, and pressed his mouth to Mickey’s. It felt so good, right, like it had before, in the car, at the gas station, and now here, in front of Ian’s own house.

Mickey let out a small, reedy moan, and Ian couldn’t help but pull him closer, wrapping both arms around his waist and squeezing enough that he knew Mickey was probably up on his toes.

What was born a firm, almost chaste kiss quickly transformed into something wet and filthy and full of tongues and teeth. Ian was getting hard in his jeans and he felt the shape of Mickey’s cock against his hip as he attacked Ian’s mouth, practically eating it as they shifted and groaned, trying to get closer.

Ian’s hands drifted lower and he had just gotten a handful of Mickey’s ass when there was a loud, distinct cough from the porch behind him.

“Does your friend want to stay for dinner, maybe?” Fiona called out, her voice pointed as it carried across the front yard.

Breaking apart just enough that he could pant into Mickey’s open mouth, their noses rubbing together, Ian smiled weakly. “That’s my sister.”

“I figured,” Mickey whispered back. He also looked slightly dazed.

Ian pulled back enough to turn and look at Fiona. She didn't look surprised, maybe a little confused, but that was all. Maybe Ian was just as bad at hiding things from his family as he was from his roommate.

He watched as Fiona tilted her head to the side. “Otherwise you guys are going to freeze out here,” she said. She held Ian’s gaze for a beat, then smiled warmly.

Ian released a breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding. He looked back at Mickey. “You want to come in?”

Mickey bit his lip, then nodded. Ian grinned, Mickey rolled his eyes, and as Fiona turned to lead them inside, Ian tugged Mickey gently up the walk and into the house.

**Author's Note:**

> I was a GDI in college, so my knowledge of the Greek system is actually pretty limited, so forgive any huge inconsistencies in that. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Any and all hits/kudos/comments are deeply appreciated. :)
> 
> Come tumbl with me, yall: ohjafeeljadefinitelyfeel.tumblr.com


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